What are all the Minesweepers Doing Here?

Heroes Remember

What are all the Minesweepers Doing Here?

Transcript

In 1944, word came about that we were going to go on a mission. Everybody was figuring, “What’s this mission?” So, right after January, after Christmas, they got them on the, they got all the minesweepers, and they said, “We’re sending you overseas. We want you to take minesweeping training overseas. You’ll be stationed in England, and your, your job will be to sweep the English Channel and keep it clear of mines. No talk about D-Day invasions that time, but that was our . . . that, that was the message that we got. June the 5th, we all got called, and they said, you know, make your home port Plymouth or Portsmouth and you, you’ll get orders from there. All the minesweepers . . . it was strange to see them. Just nothing else but minesweepers, and everybody was saying, “What?” you know “what, what’s going on? What are all these sweepers? What are they doing here?” So, they told us, you gotta go, and you’re gonna get a briefing from the Allied Supreme Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower. He said he’s got you people. So we all marched up to a great big warehouse, end of the lake, and they had, and they had everybody there was packed in solid, the whole minesweeper crew, and he told us there, “Gentleman, soldiers, sailors, airmen” you know, “we are going to embark upon a great crusade.” And then he said, “We are going to invade Germany. We are going to invade France. We have to have a sweep from Dover, England to Calais, France, which is 21 miles, 21 miles across the ocean. And we gotta put a sweep there. We want the channel clear.” So, they said as he spoke he give us the briefing. I had a briefing there, and he told us, like, you know, that we were about to embark upon a great crusade of our life, one of them, almost, of our life. And he said that the enemy was well trained and well-oiled, but us fellas there would be just as super to them, and that if we fought and got this thing, the D-Day, that victory would be ours.

Description

Mr. Gray describes sailing to England and being briefed for the D-Day invasion.

Earl Gray

Mr. Gray was born in Sydney, Nova Scotia, on May 6, 1924. As a child, he lived in poverty, despite the fact that some of his family worked in the local steel mill. Although there was a large naval presence in Sydney early in the war, Mr. Gray enlisted in the army, only to be released as an under aged recruit. Six months later, he successfully enlisted in the Royal Canadian Navy. He first experienced life at sea aboard the HMCS St.Croix, a destroyer assigned to convoy duty. After four voyages, Mr. Gray joined the minesweeper HMCS Vegreville, whose responsibility it was to sweep mines between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. After joining the 31st Minesweeping Flotilla in Portsmouth, England, HMCS Vegreville took part in the sweep of the English Channel as part of the D-Day assault. After the war ended, Mr. Gray was married within a month of his return home. He still resides in Sydney, Nova Scotia.

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